Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Damn it! Now that’s a hell of a start, lol. Starting already. I can’t catch a god-damn hand. Run run run. (Thanks Tony for lending me those words).

Well, what a crappy session at Full Tilt. Un-friggin-believable. I sit down at a shorthanded cap NL game as there was no full ring going. First hand I turn the nut flush (holding QhJh)…we push it all-in (CAP) and he shows Quads friggin Aces. Nice. I bounce all around the room for another twenty minutes, before I decide to leave, slightly down. I’m on the lookout for another game and I think it’s a good idea to fire up some Stud. Haven’t played that in a while and a while back I considered it to be my best game (as there’s so much information available).

So…I hit the table hard and everything is working, apart from one thing: I can’t win a friggin pot. Chaser #1 hits on 6th and 7th street like it was nothing. Runner runner flush to beat my straight. Runner runner straight to bust my two pair. Hell, even runner runner boat to beat my boat. That made me so fuckin mad that I only had two options:

1. Stay and donk off all my remaining chips.

2. Leave and curse the fuck out of all the lucky sobs catching all day against me – not in the pokerrroom, but on here. And so that’s what I did.

This post has been brought to you by the letter “L” – L for lucky chasing runner runner catching scumbacks taking my money 😉

Well, it’s not just that I’m (still) running very bad on there, even after reloading in trying to finally grind out the last points for the PokerSavvy bonus, it’s the fact that there system just doesn’t make sense sometimes.

I log on to reload (via the client)…

So I hit the “Click here for direct deposit” button and it takes you to the nine website…I select neteller and fire the funds. I check in the poker client and the funds are not there and my sportsbook account still shows 0$. Weird. So I go back to the website and hit the account info page. It tells me that the money I just deposited is in the sportsbook wallet. Great, what a great direct deposit to poker, lol. So…I hit the cashier window in the poker client again and the sportsbook wallet is still showing 0$. Hmm…

So I fire up live-chat-support and ask the lady about what’s going on with two simple question:

1. Why is the direct deposit transferring the money into the sportsbook wallet?

2. Why is the poker client showing 0$ in the sportsbook wallet and why is it giving my an network error when I try to transfer (instead of an “insufficient funds” error – which should be the case if there were really 0$ in it)

She tells me to hold for “a moment”. Ten minutes later still no word, oh, I’ve been transferred. Now a lady from the poker department wants to help me. I try to explain to her again what my questions are. She asks me how I want to deposit. (?!) I tell her that I already deposited and that the direct deposit to the poker client didn’t work. (Pause). Well, she tells me that a direct deposit isn’t possible anymore because of the bullshit act. I tell her that that’s fine, but that this doesn’t solve my problem and that the bigger question is why the poker client hasn’t been updated to reflect that change?! There’s nothing telling you that on the website either, so two thumbs down for customer information.

After another “Please hold for a moment”, (10 minutes), I ask again, why they’re confusing their customers by not updating the software. She tells me that they aren’t confusing anyone. I go ahead and tell her that I’m confused and that I’m someone. *lol*

She repeats her answer and I’m fed up and tell her to go ahead and transfer my funds if that’s what she can do. She tells me to hold for a moment (5minutes). She goes ahead and pastes some lovely information for US players into the chat box (see below*). Now it’s not that I dislike getting information that should have been on the website in the first place, but I dislike being bored with stuff that doesn’t matter, especially after I told her that I didn’t care about the bullshit act as I was located in germany (not that she could have seen that by looking at my account anyway). She tells me that my account was upgraded. I ask myself what an “upgraded account” might be – maybe I’m a super-duper customer now as I’m not based in the US, hence bringin in some dough?!

Anyway, the funds are still not sitting in my account so I ask again if she has transferred the funds. (Pause). She tells me that the funds should be in my account. I check again. Nothing. I close the poker client and reopen it, nothing. Some minutes later the funds finally show up and I say bye as she pastes some “thanks for chatting, hopefully we were able to help you…” standard text into the chatbox.

Nice, I finally got my funds where I wanted them in the first place and it only took roughly 40 minutes to do so…w00h0000…..go nine, NOT. Man, my funds will be out of there the second I hit the points and got my bonus from PokerSavvy – that’s for sure.

Infos for US players she pasted into the chatbox:

Support: As a current member of the ActionPoker network (www.actionpoker.com), Nine.com Poker regrets to inform all of our U.S. poker players that, effective immediately, you will no longer be able to access real-money poker play in our poker room. You will be able to login to the poker room, play for free money and make withdrawals of any balance you may have on account. You will not, however, be able to make deposits or play for real-money.
Support: Yes. Nine.com players will be able to login to the poker room, play for free money and make withdrawals of any balance they may have on account. They will not, however, be able to make deposits or play for real-money. Nine agents will have to transfer the funds for you.
Support: [If from a non-banned MGS state*] As an alternative, we invite our U.S. real-money poker players to open an account with our sister company, VIP.com, by clicking on the following link: http://www.vip.com/?skin=poker&source=nnpkr. VIP.com Poker, a member of the Microgaming poker network, looks forward to providing Nine.com customers with access to safe and secure poker action.

Well, depending on your style of playing, especially in a pressure situation like in HU, the FullTilt HU SnGs might be just right – for me they’re not. Why? Because they’re friggin boooooring and long-ass. Let me go into detail:

1. They start with 1500 chips

2. They start at blinds of 10/20

3. They got 6 minute levels

So…in contrast to that the bodog HU SnGs have got a far better structure (at least for my style):

1. They start with 1000 chips

2. The blinds start at 5/10

3. The blinds levels are 10 hands

So…10 hands < 6 minutes for sure, so a regular tourney takes 5-x minutes (sometimes even quicker, sometimes a bit longer, but I guess 6-8 minutes is the average). In contrast to that the FTP HU SnGs take ages. I just played one and at about level three I was so bored as nothing was happening. I got Aces three times and won the regular xx chips twice as my opponent had nothing, then he cracked my third Aces with the good old "but they were s0000ted hand". Nothing wrong there, it can happen. But after that it was jab-jab-duck-dover-jab-jab for another 20 minutes before he finally won with presto against my AQ. So, I won't be playing any HU SnGs on FTP in the future, I'll stick to CAP ring games... 🙂

…is the number of HU SnGs I played over the last few days, lol. It sounds a lot, but it really isn’t all that much if you think about the fact that, depending on the opponent and the cards, a match can last anywhere from 1-15 minutes. I guess the average was around 6-8 minutes/match.

Today’s session close the deal on 100 SnGs and I’m not satisfied with today’s result, but totally satisfied with the overall result.

Today: HU SnGs played: 16, HU SnGs won: 8

Total: HU SnGs played: 100, HU SnGs won: 66

So, I won 66% of the matches. Not bad I guess, although the number could have been even higher without some major suckouts…then again I had my share of suckouts in return, so I guess it all evens itself out. And why should I complain? 66% won matches is actually quite good, I guess?!

Some more stats:

Money wagered: 100 x 5$

Juice payed: 100 x .25 = 25$, wow…quite a bit, but I consider this a “tip” to bodog for handing me all the fish 🙂

Money won|net won: 66 x 10 = 660$ | 660-525 = 135$ 🙂
I think I’ll take a break from bodog and HU matches for now…after all I still got the FullTilt Reload-bonus to clear and I’m still planning on grinding out the last few points at nine to clear my PokerSavvy bonus there….so expect to hear about some more ring games and “normal” SnGs in the near future…

Got back from work late, so I didn’t have much spare time before footie training…only 3 HU SnGs…won all three…now that I’m back from training I fired up bodog again and hit the HU SnGs…won the first four (so the first 7 in a row in total today)…lost the next one…won the next two. That’s enough poker for me today as I’m pretty tired and I don’t like to give back money to the donkeys because I’m not really focussed….so…

After hitting the headsup tables once again tonight, I started wondering: Can this really last? Can I keep beating the competition in 60-66% of all matches? Well, the answer isn’t a clear “yes” or “no”…depending on my focus, the run of cards and many other factors, everything is possible, but sometimes even the biggest suckouts against me can’t stop me from winning. There, I said it. Oooooh, let’s hope that the poker gods don’t put the curse on me, lol…but back on topic…it’s really amazing how some of the concepts I recently read/seen/thought about are coming to life in some of the matches. Being really aggressive and unpredictable early on. Never showing anything unless it’s called down. Always raising, always playing, almost never folding. “Any two cards will do”, especially if my opponents are so intimidated (?!) that they let me see flops for free all the time…disaster my friends…like in the one match which lasted exactly one hand. Opponent on the button min raises to twenty (blinds start at 5/10), I reraise to fourty with J6o…he calls…flop comes 66Q…I lead out the pot…he ponders and calls…turn is blank…I bet the pot…he calls…river blank….I push….he calls…shows AA and is out. Hard for him to get away from the hand as he most def put me on a weak queen…but still not totally impossible to laydown the hand. On another note: most suckouts against me are just at that point in the match when I finally hold a “quality” or even premium starting hand…the most money (stack time) is when I play my “high stakes poker”-style game…57o…gold! 46o gold! 53o platinum! lol…unreal how many players really think their TPSK/TPTK is good…

Anyway..enough babbling…cold hard facts: Won 9 out of 15 bringing the total to 49 out of 74 and a nice profit. I just requested another payout…lovely to see your “freeroll” money grow and grow (I had withdrawn my original deposit along with some profit after completing the PSO bonus) 🙂

Edit: And just as I post this, the money is already sitting in my Neteller account again. Wow…withdrawal request till processing/money in Neteller: 18 minutes! 🙂

This is the first post in a new category – Non-Poker-Related-Gambling or NPRG for short.

As I was entering my commuter train to work this morning, I saw four young kids sitting on the floor with a lot of footie pics (from the 2006 WC) in front of them. As I was rather knackered from yet another short night, I wasn’t too interested in what was going on…until the magic words came out of their mouths “schick-schnack-schnuck” (Ro-sham-bo). *lol*

Now I had to take a closer look. All “players” participating are required to lay one footie pic in the middle. Then a round of elimination roshambo is played between all players to determine the order of the next step. (Player 1 wins…he’s got the first try, Players 2-3 coninue to determine 2nd, 3rd and 4th)

The next step is that they fold the pics in half and lay them in one row. Then the winner hits the floor with open hands – the pics that flip are his/her’s to keep. If there are pics left, the 2nd player gets a shot, etc.

Now if that wasn’t enough, I couldn’t really stop laughing (on the inside) as one of the “gamblers” announced a rematch feature texas rules (double the bet)…*lol*…I guess gambling starts at a much younger age these days, as none of the kids was older then 9 years old, lol…watch out…the next generation is going to be after us soon enough 😉

Played some HU SnGs again…this time I didn’t make it to twenty as I got to run in a few minutes. Nontheless I managed to play 17 🙂

Got off to a really really rough start winning only one out of the first five. Probably should have won at least 3, but you know that both variance and the poker gods can be cruel some time. Move my money in with AQ vs A9…river…9…moved my money in with QQ vs K10…flop K10x…apart from that the usual same ol’ same ol’ which sometimes makes you chuckle…even though it’s disastrous for the match you’re in…like these two lovely hands: I hold AJ…raise…reraise..call…Axx on the flop…bet…raise…reraise…push…he shows AK…or the other lovely hand…I hold AK…raise…reraise…Ace on the flop…bet…raise…push…he shows AA…nice shuffle! 😉

Anyway…got the aggression monkey out again and was able to win 10 out of the next 12…bringing my total for the day to 11 out of 17 (40 out of 61Edit: 59 (20+20+17+2 != 61 ;)) total)…not bad..nah..that’s not the right wording…it’s great! Three days of HU SnGs and I double my roll at bodog 🙂 🙂 🙂